Kiss Away Her Tears: A Bellatrix Story
by Lady Lestrange
Summary: A Story told from Rodolphus POV. Did the Dark Lord give away his one chance for salvation when he gave away Bellatrix's love for him? Could such a creature as Bellatrix love? Could such a creature as the Dark Lord love? It's a dark and twisted tale...


**Kiss Away Her Tears**

**By Lady Lestrange**

Disclaimer: The Harry Potter characters and previous situations belong to JK Rowlings. No infringement is meant or implied. No money is made from this Fanfic. THANKS JK.

-Lady Lestrange

She went to Hogwarts. I knew because she was in my year, but I didn't meet her there. I met her on the sinful streets of Knockturn. They knew her well. Perhaps they loved her too. Perhaps they thought they could save her as I did, but she was elusive as smoke on a Muggle's house, and just as unsaveable. When I saw her, I knew I was lost with her. Her dark eyes ensnared me and her passion pierced the façade that I had so carefully laid all those years in Slytherin. I loved her. I loved her like a sailor loves a Siren and I let her sing to me, leading me into a stupor of foolishness that I should have avoided. If I hadn't loved her, for if it hadn't been for her, I would never have given my life to her Lord Voldemort. I would have supported him of course, but I wouldn't have carried a banner in his campaign. I would have been discrete. She did not know the meaning of the word, and she dragged me into the passion of her world. I went as a willing victim.

It's not my fault. I used to tell the other Slytherins that she had brewed some powerful love potion, but if she had, I knew in my heart she wouldn't have brewed it for me. If she had brewed it, if she could have, she would have ensnared him, and I would have died. It's not my fault. It's just my nature. We're both the same really, whores of darkness, addicted to sin. We're creatures of the underworld, wanting violence and pain, wanting what we cannot have. That is our personal hell. We're not allowed to reach for anything better so we reached for each other and he laughed at us—laughed at us both—and then he gave us to each other. Perhaps it was a whim.

He gave her to me. I should have been grateful, I suppose, but I was appalled. Nonetheless, I took her. The ceremony passed in a blur. All of the important wizards and witches were there, but I saw only her. She saw only him

"Do you take thee to share both in death and in life? To have and to hold for now and eternity in magic and blood, one power forever?"

"I do," she said unemotionally.

"I do," I answered, falling into the black depth of her eyes.

He hissed once in Parseltongue and the enchanted snakes that were our rings slithered around to bite their tails. It was done. She was mine. I wondered for an instant whether he would always be there between us. I wondered what he had done to our rings, but that was the least of his interference. I knew it with the certainty that the damned know the devil.

"You may kiss the bride."

As my lips brushed hers, I thought, One day, she will love me. I vowed that one day she would see me as a man instead of a tool. One day, sometime in the far future, but wizards are long lived. I can wait. Set aside like a simmering potion to boil to crack, I forced myself to wait, the serpent ring on my finger a promise of possession, but not love.

Behind closed doors we reached for each other and gained some measure of solace. She was good at it. Years of searching for the love that he could not give her, had taught her how to be a courtesan. She was not innocent. She was never innocent, but then, neither was I. She never learned to be a wife and yet she could have ensnared the richest of the purebloods. She was a Black. She was beautiful. She was intoxicating. She was darkness, and violence and death, and I loved her still. They all leered at her. I could see the wanting in their eyes behind their white masks; they thought I didn't see. They thought I didn't care. They thought that she was just a prize that the Dark Lord had given me for some unknown reason, but oh, I know the truth. They tell me that I am a fool for taking the Dark Lord's leavings, but they are not clean-hearted men. They would despoil her with their greasy kisses and foul hands before I could say Quiddich, if he would let them, but he entrusted her to me and for that I should be thankful.

I've often wondered how is it that he, who doesn't know love, saw that only I could hold her safe? How is it that he, who doesn't know love, could see it in my face or in my mind? I wondered if he used Legilimency or if it was so transparent on my face. I hope not. I am still a Slytherin.

It amazes me sometimes when we are in a frenzy of his work, when the passion is high as Death Eaters curse and kill and rape, that she will just look at me and guilt gnaws at me because some part of me knows it is not me she wants with that wild desperate lust. Even as she whispers words of passion to me in the smoky dusk, I know, but I do not blame her. In the silence in some dirty corner of a Muggle's garden, we do not speak of what will not be and I hold her close, giving her what he will not.

Sometimes she cries: Never in public—Only at home—Only in my arms. This is a gift he has never had. It is mine and mine alone. Her tears fill me with wonder because she does not shed them lightly, and I think I am the only one who has ever seen them glistening like diamonds on her cheeks. I kiss them away, and whisper, "I will be faithful. I will wait until you can reward me with that sultry smile again."

Then her eyes narrow like a cat's, hooded eyes, and I feel her toying with me. "Faithful," she sneers. "How Hufflepuff! I don't expect you to be faithful. I know I will not." She laughs. "I don't have it in me, to be your faithful wife, Rodolphus. You knew that when you took me."

But I know her better than that; better than she knows herself. "I can wait," I tell her. "One day you will be ready to love again." I know my precious witch has a heart underneath her buxom curves after all, although she would deny it. I have seen it, broken. He may as well have shattered it with a Reducto charm when he gave her so callously away, but I have put the light back in her eyes and picked up the pieces of her heart. Yes, she does have a heart. I have seen it.

I see it in her coy playfulness when she bats her eyelashes at me and bites her lower lip. I watch her cheeks glow with passion and reach out to her. I see it in her cool teasing like a fine wine to be tasted and savored. I see it in the wild mad laughter of our Slytherin games that lead me on a merry chaise. I see it when she is soft and sultry with hooded eyes telling me that she is a caged cobra waiting to sink her teeth into me, to swallow me whole. Yes, I can taste the poison on her lips, and I, unlike him, am not afraid of death. Instead I wonder what that kiss would taste like. I can wait. I will be faithful. She is not his queen. She is mine.

When she stands in the circle pouring forth her dogmas, I think she is the most beautiful woman in the world and I wonder at his stupidity for giving her up. I think then that he is just pathetic. I feel sorry for him sometimes because I know a part of her will always be mine now, the part that cries, the part that is human, the part that loves. He cannot touch her there even with his magic. I see despair in those red eyes when he sees her awesome strength. He knows one has been born who will kill him and I wonder if he regrets his trade. She would be a fine one to stand as his queen, but she is not his and I cannot help but smirk. When I see his red eyes upon her I wonder if he remembers with regret the day he gave her to me. Of course he does. How could any man not want her? I've seen him close his eyes and Crucio another for no reason, because that's all he has. He doesn't have her. Not really. I think I am the only one who sees how he pretends. He watches me silently. I can never tell what he's thinking. Sometimes I get an uneasy feeling that he's laughing at me, but then the thought vanishes when I look into his vacant eyes. He lost it all when he lost her and I want to smirk. I cannot smirk. One does not smirk at the Dark Lord Voldemort.

Instead I lower my head and touch the little snake ring on my left hand and wonder. I wonder if he cries. Do red eyes cry? I do not know, but I know that look of utter despair. He is wild to find the Potters, to destroy them before he is destroyed, but I know, he was destroyed long ago when he gave her away. When he gave away her love he lost whatever might have saved him. He lost his chance to live.

"It's over," I tell her. "He is dead." I should rejoice, but I cannot.

He actually believed all that shit they spouted off about pureblood supremacy. Imagine his surprise when he realized that he was a half blood! Imagine him trying to kill off that part of himself with his father's death. Imagine him trying to rid himself of love by casting her away, and now learning that it was his lack of love that was his downfall after all. The terrible irony doesn't please me. Like everyone else, I fell under his spell for a while. I danced to his charisma and played his games until he abandoned her, and suddenly he was so transparent. I knew then I had to be the strong one: strong for her. And then what does the idiot do? He goes and gets himself reduced to a bodiless wretch. For him, I do not care, but for her, I ache.

I should be horrified as the little snake shrivels and drops from my left hand. I push up my sleeve and look at my arm. It is clear as a newborn's flesh.

It's over, I tell her, but she won't believe it. Holding the dead snake ring, she screams her rage and defiance, crushing it within her palm. She wants to wallow in her pain and mourn her precious Dark Lord, but she does not cry. She rails against the inequity of fate. She pounds me with her fists. She curses the Longbottoms to insanity. Their loss seems to break something loose inside of her, and the floodgates of her tears are finally opened.

"Do not cry for him," I growl, betrayed to the center of my being.

"No, not for him," she mutters as she clings to me as she had never done before. "For us. For all that we should have been."

Did he love her? Maybe. He gave her to me, didn't he? I promise myself that I will protect her from her own impetuous folly, but in the end, I cannot, and we are doomed before we ever enter the courtroom.

I see her struggling for control. No one else would know. Only someone who knows her so intimately would see the tension in her jaw, the way her lip trembles just a bit and she bites it hard to stop it from betraying her fear. They do not let us touch. They do not let us talk, but she talks all the same.

Her eyes are flashing. I have never seen her so beautiful. She screams her magnificent fury, "The Dark Lord will rise again, Crouch! Throw us into Azkaban; we will wait! He will rise again and come for us; he will reward us beyond any of his other supporters. We alone were faithful. We alone tried to find him." Her eyes, hooded and cat-like meet mine as Barty Crouch Jr. begins to cry about love and family, begging his father to save him, but they know nothing of love. His mother faints.

In the din, we have a moment unmolested and I know she is speaking to me, "We alone were faithful." She says as she sweeps from the room like a queen flanked by dementor guard while I try to pull myself together. As I leave the courtroom the dementors are treated to an elated thought of mine. She didn't cry. Even with him reduced to nothing, she didn't cry, not for him. Her tears are not for him. The tears are still mine, and mine alone.

-finis-


End file.
